


Where you don't see me

by quakefalcon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Fix-It, Happy Castiel (Supernatural), Happy Dean Winchester, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Reunion, jack brings cas back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27633572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quakefalcon/pseuds/quakefalcon
Summary: "Castiel had thought it would start feeling different after a while, but it still was the same sudden awareness of his borrowed body and of the ground beneath his feet. The same dazed feeling of descending into consciousness once again.His eyes adjusted slowly to the light around him as he stood in a corn field, right beside a half abandoned gas station with the windows blown and grass growing in the cracks in the tiled floor. Its only inhabitant was a tabby cat with what looked to be a chewed out ear and short muddy hair. The cat eyed him suspiciously before jumping on the old disused counter and starting to clean the mud away with broad strokes of its rough tongue. Castiel studied it for a while, head tilted a little to the left.The simple fact that he was alone for this surprised him."
Relationships: Castiel & Jack Kline, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 85





	Where you don't see me

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write my own version of the finale before the show could ruin everything for me like it always does so here it is <3 wrote it in three hours sorry if it's rough at the edges lol. also, this is something i always say: english is not my first language, so be patient with me. enjoy this. <3  
> ____________  
> title from mitski's francis forever  
> "I don't need the world to see  
> That I've been the best I can be, but  
> I don't think I could stand to be  
> Where you don't see me"

It was always as simple as that: one second he was not, then the next he was, and all the announcement they had beforehand was the woosh of a body suddenly filling an empty space, displacing the air around them. The number of times this had happened to him was ridiculously high and his head started hurting everytime he thought about it for more than ten seconds, but he had been a Winchester for a decade and resurrection had become their thing now.

Castiel had thought it would start feeling different after a while, but it still was the same sudden awareness of his borrowed body and of the ground beneath his feet. The same dazed feeling of descending into consciousness once again.

His eyes adjusted slowly to the light around him as he stood in a corn field, right beside a half abandoned gas station with the windows blown and grass growing in the cracks in the tiled floor. Its only inhabitant was a tabby cat with what looked to be a chewed out ear and short muddy hair. The cat eyed him suspiciously before jumping on the old disused counter and starting to clean the mud away with broad strokes of its rough tongue. Castiel studied it for a while, head tilted a little to the left.

The simple fact that he was alone for this surprised him.

The wind suddenly ruffled his hair and with it came the awareness of another presence beside him. He blinked and Jack appeared in front of him with a sheepish smile on his face.

Cas felt himself gasp at the power he was perceiving from his son and radiance immediately filled him from outside going in and he knew Jack was the source.

“Hi” Jack said, raising his hand in greeting. Not a wave, just a show of his open palm.

Cas let the familiarity of it calm him.

“What did the three of you do now?” he asked, dragging a hand down his weary face.

Jack’s smile widened.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s all over now” the boy said with a shrug and Castiel sighed. “Shouldn’t you be more worried about where we are?”.

Castiel furrowed his eyebrows at the question, head turning one way and then the opposite to look at his surroundings.

“In the middle of nowhere in Central America?” he replied, because they somehow always ended up in the middle of nowhere in Central America, so it was a safe guess.

“It’s the last gas station my mom stopped at before she met you” Jack answered, his small mouth twisted in a pout like he was trying very hard to work out something.

Cas nodded, bowing his head to look at his feet and still feeling surprised that he had feet at all.

“I suppose it’s a metaphor full of significance and so on”.

Jack smiled indulgently, which was weird enough that Cas felt uneasy.

“It was the last place she was in before she had to make a very important choice… I think that’s why I brought you here”.

“And what are _my_ choices exactly?”.

Jack shrugged again, weighing the question.

“I waited a while to bring you back… It probably did Sam and Dean some bad, but I had to wait, it made sense”.

Castiel hummed in acknowledgment and wondered where this was going to go. He bunched up a little bit of the fabric of his trench coat in his fist, trying to get used to touching things again.

“I’m sorry about it” Jack said, a complete look of serenity taking over his face and Castiel saw golden tendrils unfold from Jack’s limbs to swallow both of them in a halo of light and it felt like they were suspended in a bubble, “But I had to fix something before I could do this”.

Castiel had let the gift of patience leave him through the years and had grown inside that particular human sense of unrest that made him want everything all at once, but he forced himself to be still as Jack stood unwavering and sure in front of him.

“I was always going to bring you back and I think Sam and Dean knew that and that’s why they didn’t press me after we defeated Chuck, but I needed to wait. They needed to wait too, so that they would have time to remember how life is without you, so that it doesn’t hurt them as much when you make your choice. I promised I wouldn’t meddle, but I needed to do this for you. If it hadn’t been for you I would have never been born. I wouldn’t have had any family. I couldn’t leave you in the Empty and all four of us know that. But… But I wanted to give you a gift. The gift of choice, of exercising your free will”.

Cas nodded, clenching his fists at his sides, because he was pretty certain Jack was God now somehow and he didn’t know how God would feel at having His thousand years older father throw his arms around Him and sob on His shoulder from the force of his love for Him.

“I know it pained you to see Heaven in chaos. So I fixed it for you. And now you have that choice”.

Castiel froze up.

“All there’s left to do is find Heaven’s new leader” Jack said, the smile of the all-knowing planted permanently on his lips.

“Or?” Castiel asked, anticipation and hope making themselves known in the unruly rhythm of his heartbeat. And wasn't that something.

“Or you can be with them forever” Jack replied and his smile grew wider, more boyish, and he finally looked like himself, “And you can grow old with him”.

Cas made a half step forward on instinct, but then he remembered himself and hesitated, still wary of all that Jack represented now. The boy smiled and widened his arms for him.

Castiel hugged him close, squeezed as tight as his strength permitted, and in that moment they were just a father and a son who had missed each other.

In the blink of an eye and with another small woosh, the corn field emptied.

***

Dean had gone to fetch dinner and Eileen had insisted on coming along, probably thinking that some one on one time with her boyfriend’s brother was long overdue.

The drive to the diner and back had been only mildly uncomfortable as Dean tried to fill the unbearable silence -which he realized was one sided- by talking about Miracle and Eileen had been polite enough to look interested in his ravings about their new dog as she followed his lips closely in the rearview mirror, which he had adjusted for her beforehand so she could see his mouth fully. Her answers were short and clipped and awkward as all their interactions had always been and she sometimes signed at him what she knew he could understand -he was trying to learn sign language, he was really putting effort in it, but he was still at the beginnings.

He was way better at teaching Miracle new commands everyday. And what a good friend Miracle was turning out to be for him.

Sam had been so surprised when it had been Dean who pressed to take Miracle home and bathed her and fed her, but Dean was older and more tired than he had ever been and he desperately wanted to hold onto the feeling that seeing that dog in a deserted world gave him that first time.

He had fought too hard for too long to deny himself things now.

At least Miracle gave him something to do while he waited.

And he was waiting, probably uselessly.

Thus all the new dog tricks he was trying to teach Miracle -which he related to Eileen in painstaking detail, not knowing if shutting up was the better choice.

As he turned the last corner and the entrance to the bunker’s garage came into view, though, everything came to a stop all at once.

He let the Impala slow down, trying to remember how to inhale and exhale, and he knew from her small but loud intake of breath that Eileen was equally shaken at the sight before them.

Dean parked -very badly- and he turned the engine off. He sat in his seat and stared out the window.

Sam waved awkwardly, a bag of dog poop still in his hand, and Dean ignored him as he and Eileen got out of the car in what seemed to him slow motion. Eileen came to squeeze his shoulder before she walked towards Sam leading Miracle with her red leash.

She tried to sign something but then was reminded of the bags of food in her hands and gave up, smiling very brightly.

“We’ll be inside… Man, it’s good to see you” Sam muttered before he reached for Eileen’s hands and they went inside.

Castiel stared at Dean. Dean stared at Castiel.

Castiel’s eyes were red rimmed and Dean wondered whether he was in worse or better conditions.

As he opened his mouth to talk, a loud rumbling came from Castiel’s stomach.

Cas blinked repeatedly, surprised, and smoothed a hand over his lower belly.

“Well” he said, sounding apologetic, and Dean dissolved into a fit of laughter so strong that tears started poking from his eyes and falling down his cheeks.

Or at least that was the reason he gave himself.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


It was one of the many mornings after, of which Dean had lost count by now. And he had counted, at the beginning of this, as he and Castiel shifted their lives around one last time to accommodate one last change.

They had fallen into this as they had fallen into everything else: hard and rushing and impatient. And it made Dean wonder time and time again if it was even worth it, as they butted heads over the littlest things, such as who had to move his stuff into whose room when they had started sharing a bed every night, or such as what titles to use for each other when they presented themselves to other people -because _boyfriends_ made Dean feel very juvenile and very old at the same time-, or such as if jealous fits were allowed when the waitress started to hit on Castiel. And the big fights had been there too, as their complementing unresolved traumas got in between, or as Dean had to unlearn the self-hatred he developed for loving a man over the last decade, or as Castiel had to deal with the frustration of being human.

But it was one of the many mornings after the rest of their lives had started, and Dean now knew a peace he had never thought he could know.

He rested his chin on Castiel’s naked chest and looked up at him, as he snored slightly, and he smiled.

He pinched Castiel’s side just to see him startle awake and immediately glare at him.

“What?” Cas said, groggily.

“It’s Sunday morning and Jody and the girls are coming for lunch in two hours and we are still in bed” Dean replied, resting a kiss in the dip of Castiel’s collarbones.

“Sounds like a you problem, since _you’re_ the cook” Cas groaned, tugging the covers over their heads and closing his eyes again.

Dean huffed a laugh, pinching his side once more, and Cas slapped his hand away and grunted in annoyance.

Quiet settled around them and Dean pressed another kiss to Castiel’s skin, unable to stop himself.

Cas opened his left eye a sliver, sighed, and raised his hand to pet through Dean’s greying hair.

He looked painfully cosy and Dean moved up his body to kiss him softly. Castiel’s fingers tightened in his hair as he kissed him back, the familiarity of it making itself plain. Dean smiled against him and felt warm contentment travel through his limbs.

A thought hit Dean in that moment and it rushed through his lips before he could think better of it.

“Do you think we can be this happy forever?”.

Cas rested his cheek on the top of Dean’s head.

“Only if you promise not to burn lunch”.

Dean hid his face against Cas’s neck and smiled so wide it hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos to YOU if you reached this point and happy spn finale day??????? i am scared so maybe come on [twitter](https://twitter.com/quakefalcon) to tell me whether or not you're scared about it too


End file.
